<SPAN class=postbody><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 18px; LINE-HEIGHT: normal">My Unexpected Blessing</SPAN>
<SPAN style="FONT-STYLE: italic">This story is a true account of an unexpected blessing I received from God. In this testimony, I reveal some of the deepest secrets of my life, and some are unpleasant. I do not write this to receive pity. I write this that others may benefit and the Lord may be praised. The Lord has blessed me and I want to share this blessing!</SPAN></SPAN>
It was the middle of the night, New Year's Eve, 1996. I was thirty-one. My wife, our four-year-old son, our one-year-old daughter, and I were all asleep. Since the advent of our first child's birth, we had long given up the custom of staying up until midnight to ring in the new year. I was a sergeant in the Army, and had recently been reassigned to Fort Bragg, North Carolina. On this night, we had been living there in a temporary apartment for about two weeks, and life was moving along fairly well.
Like most people, I have numerous dreams when I sleep -- I just can't recall what most are about. Occasionally, though, I'll have a dream that is so realistic that it leaves me amazed even after I wake. About 2:00 a.m., I began to have such a dream. Dreams being what they are, they often do not make sense when described in the light of day, so please bear with me. It has been quite some time since these events took place, so some of the dream's details have been forgotten, but the important parts will never be forgotten. The dream's setting was a typical looking building on an Army post. It had a large roof overhang covering the sidewalk that lined the front of the building. It had large "store-front" windows, and a cafeteria with tables inside. It was the middle of the day. When the dream began, I was standing in front of the building, on the walkway, talking to a man who was a warrant officer (a technician rank that is just below lieutenant). He was imaginary, but I felt like I knew him well. He was conducting some sort of investigation, and because we were friends, he wanted my assistance.
The details are fuzzy here, but he told me he was trying to hear what two lieutenants were talking about at a table inside. He was going to climb up through a trap door in the underside of the roof overhang, and hide in there, listening to the two lieutenants. As he climbed inside, he told me he wanted me to go into the building and say something to the lietenants, evidently to prompt them to say something of interest for the warrant officer. I remember speaking with them, but not what was said.
As I remember it, the next part of the dream was a man pressing a large push-button on the wall that activated the huge trash compacting and grinding machine, which was located in the overhang over the walkway, and was so large as to fill the entire overhang (dreams do not always make sense, remember?). Everyone knew that the machine was there, including the warrant officer and me, and neither of us had thought anything of it when he climbed up inside it earlier. I screamed to them to shut it off as I ran for the controls! I knew that the warrant officer was being hurt inside the machine! I yelled for someone to help! I tried to tell everyone that there was a man hurt inside the trash compactor, and to please call an ambulance! But, they found it hard to believe and were slow to do anything! Panic filled me as I ran to help him myself and to show them where he was!
The dream changed the two lieutenants into two police officers showing up to investigate the report of a man being hurt in the trash compactor. They were skeptical, especially after I opened the trap door under the overhang and found no sign of the warrant officer. I tried telling them that he must have crawled further down, and that he was definitely in there and most likely dying! We moved to an open garage area at the end of the building. One policeman looked around a little, while the other wanted to take my statement. They were in no hurry. I told them again and again to please call an ambulance, but they refused to do so until they found the hurt man -- if he existed.
Just then, I heard the police officer's hand-held radio say something, and I quickly grabbed it off of his belt and ran outside toward the road. If they wouldn't call for an ambulance, I would! I figured that the fastest way to get one there would be to call in on the police radio and tell them that there was a police officer down and to send an ambulance right away. They would come faster for one of their own, right? So that's what I did. "Police officer down! Send an ambulance immediately!" Just then, I heard them say, "We found something!" I ran back under the overhang and into the open garage! As I got inside the garage, a police officer was opening another trap door in the ceiling. When he opened it, a very large pool of blood and the awful carnage of the completely mangled body of the warrant officer dropped to the floor suddenly! He was definitely dead. I immediately turned away and walked back outside as quickly as I could, but I did not get far. A grief like I had never known or even imagined filled my being, twisted my gut, and dropped me hard on my knees!
I awoke from the dream sobbing, and weighted with such immense sorrow that I was unable to get to my feet. Now, added to my unexplained grief was fearful surprise. "Where is this coming from? It was only a dream!", I said to myself. It was only a dream, but the grief was more real than I had ever known, and completely overwhelmed me. Wave after wave of intensifying grief washed over me, and I was afraid. Suddenly the answer hit me like a bolt of lightning, and I knew it was from God: the dream was sent by God, and it was symbolic. The warrant officer represented my father. (My father was a police officer, killed in the line of duty just before my sixth birthday). The unbearable grief was not new; I had been carrying it around all these years like a big rock in the bottom of my heart. I think I knew it was there, but I had no idea of the magnitude. Part of the dream expressed my sorrow at not being able to help him. Part of it was my frustration with those who wouldn't help him, or were slow in doing so. A large part was about something I had not considered: my sorrow over my father's physical pain, agony, injury, broken bones, and bleeding. Of course, mourning for my dead father was most of it. I had not mourned when my father died -- I just pushed down the pain and went on with my life. The Lord sent the dream to show me the grief and heal me if I would let Him. You see, I never had dreams about my father -- I had buried the grief even at that level, because I was so afraid of it (a difficult point to understand, unless you've been there). God had concealed the dream in symbolism to get past my defenses.
The explanation of the answer that you just read took time to read, but when God sent the answer, it was instantaneous. I was only awake for about thirty seconds, overwhelmed and bewildered, and asking where this was coming from, when I received the answer from God. There was no doubt that it was God. Now I had to make a choice. You may find this hard to understand, but even with the Lord wanting to heal me, it still took every bit of courage I had to say, "Yes, Lord! Heal me! Heal me! Heal me, O Lord, Heal me!" I knew what accepting the Lord's healing would mean. He would not simply take the grief away. He wanted to walk through it with me. I would have to dive to the bottom of my grief like a man diving to the bottom of the ocean, praying as Peter did, "Lord, save me!"
The waves of grief grew even stronger and for lack of a better description, I went under. I wept from the bottom of my soul for a long while. Somewhere in the middle, I began crying out, "Daddy!... Daaddyyy!!... Daaaddyyyyy!!!" Then, a clear memory from my childhood came to mind. I was about four years old, and I was crying in my Daddy's arms. It was night, and he was sitting on the bed in my room. I heard him say, "Cry it all out, son. Cry it all out." My grieving at that point became indescribable. I was no longer to say anything, but I prayed from my heart, "Lord, heal me!" A vivid picture came to my mind of a hand with a scalpel cutting open a physical heart, reaching inside, and pulling out this large, ugly rock, with the sinew clinging to it. The hand cut the sinew, took away the rock, and closed up the heart. I began praying, "Lord, thank You for healing me!! Thank You for healing me!! Thank You, Lord, for healing me!!" My tears began to turn into tears of joy! Just as I knew that God had sent the dream, I knew that God had healed me! I am healed! Praise the Lord!
When my tears began to subside, as I was offering thanksgiving to God, I began to look over my past life as if suddenly a light had been turned on and everything was now clear. My hidden grief for my father had touched every part of my life...nearly every decision ever made... nearly every problem I ever had. Suddenly, I saw it all - saw the effects of the grief on my life, and was very surprised at how big a role it had played in my life.
My relationship with God had been affected by it. When I was sixteen years old, on December 7, 1980, I repented and was wonderfully saved by the Lord Jesus; but, every time that I would slip and fall, I felt that God did not want me anymore. Many times, I wrongly thought that I had to be saved again, and I continually feared that I had lost Him for good -- just like I had lost my earthly father for good, though I failed to see the connection until now. My refusal or inability to progress well in school while growing up was also caused in part by my grief. I didn't want to work or learn or succeed... I just wanted my Daddy.
When I was eight years old, I was molested and raped (sodomized) by a seventeen-year-old nephew of my step-father. For many years, I thought that I remembered it happening only once, but on a recent night, some words rang in my head that caused me to sit bolt upright in my bed: "If you don't let me do it to you anymore, then I'll do it to your little [five-year-old] brother [in the bunk below]!" It wasn't just once. He lived with us for atleast two weeks. It was tragic. Yet, I had often wondered while growing up why I had not suffered what I believed would have been the usual degree of psychological damage from such an abuse. I really had the feeling that somehow I had escaped the full impact, though I did not know why. Now I knew why! While the damage was substantial, I did survive it with less than most because the grief that he caused me did not compare to the grief that I already had within me! (Please do not pity me! The Lord supplies all the healing that I will ever need!)
My original choice of a career in the Army was obviously affected by my father dying in service to his country. It is also no coincidence that I fell in love with, and married, a woman who had lost both of her parents by the age of eighteen. I could go on and on with examples, and I do not even remember all of the ones brought to mind on the night of my healing.
One of the important outcomes of my healing is how I feel about the three people who killed my father. They drove into our front yard around midnight, goading him, and he pursued them. They led him out of town, ran him off the road, pulled him out of his cruiser, beat him until his skull was crushed, put him back into his cruiser, shut off the motor and lights, broke off the key in the ignition, and left him for dead. He was found three hours later, a mere mile from his last known location (on the same road), by a reluctant sherrif's deputy. He died ten days later, leaving behind a wife and three children (6, 2, and 9 months old). The men's names were known, but for lack of evidence, they were never put on trial. When I was first saved, I knew that I would have to forgive these people if God was to forgive me. I tried, and perhaps I did forgive them with God's help and power; but, now that the Lord has healed me, I feel it at a much deeper level. I no longer have to keep reminding myself that I hae forgiven them. With God as my Witness, and only by His grace and power, I love them. That's right... I love the people who killed my father. I pray that the Lord does not hold that sin against them for my sake, and I often pray for their salvation. I hope someday to meet each one of them and share the love and gospel of Christ with them. I can't explain it. Only God can give that kind of love. Only God could heal me in such a manner.
My grief is gone! And I thank God for that; but, I did not have to wait twenty-six years to be healed. The fact that I waited so many years that God had to intervene in the wonderful way that He did is to my shame -- not my credit. His powerful healing of me is to His glory, but He would have healed me at any time, had I only been willing to lay my grief at His feet! He heals the broken hearted. All we have to do is ask! I also am aware that the Christian life should not be about looking back at some fantastic spiritual experience, but should be about pressing forward to reach that high mark that He has put before us.
"Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted." Blessed am I! Praise Him!
Ken</SPAN>
<SPAN style="FONT-STYLE: italic">This story is a true account of an unexpected blessing I received from God. In this testimony, I reveal some of the deepest secrets of my life, and some are unpleasant. I do not write this to receive pity. I write this that others may benefit and the Lord may be praised. The Lord has blessed me and I want to share this blessing!</SPAN></SPAN>
It was the middle of the night, New Year's Eve, 1996. I was thirty-one. My wife, our four-year-old son, our one-year-old daughter, and I were all asleep. Since the advent of our first child's birth, we had long given up the custom of staying up until midnight to ring in the new year. I was a sergeant in the Army, and had recently been reassigned to Fort Bragg, North Carolina. On this night, we had been living there in a temporary apartment for about two weeks, and life was moving along fairly well.
Like most people, I have numerous dreams when I sleep -- I just can't recall what most are about. Occasionally, though, I'll have a dream that is so realistic that it leaves me amazed even after I wake. About 2:00 a.m., I began to have such a dream. Dreams being what they are, they often do not make sense when described in the light of day, so please bear with me. It has been quite some time since these events took place, so some of the dream's details have been forgotten, but the important parts will never be forgotten. The dream's setting was a typical looking building on an Army post. It had a large roof overhang covering the sidewalk that lined the front of the building. It had large "store-front" windows, and a cafeteria with tables inside. It was the middle of the day. When the dream began, I was standing in front of the building, on the walkway, talking to a man who was a warrant officer (a technician rank that is just below lieutenant). He was imaginary, but I felt like I knew him well. He was conducting some sort of investigation, and because we were friends, he wanted my assistance.
The details are fuzzy here, but he told me he was trying to hear what two lieutenants were talking about at a table inside. He was going to climb up through a trap door in the underside of the roof overhang, and hide in there, listening to the two lieutenants. As he climbed inside, he told me he wanted me to go into the building and say something to the lietenants, evidently to prompt them to say something of interest for the warrant officer. I remember speaking with them, but not what was said.
As I remember it, the next part of the dream was a man pressing a large push-button on the wall that activated the huge trash compacting and grinding machine, which was located in the overhang over the walkway, and was so large as to fill the entire overhang (dreams do not always make sense, remember?). Everyone knew that the machine was there, including the warrant officer and me, and neither of us had thought anything of it when he climbed up inside it earlier. I screamed to them to shut it off as I ran for the controls! I knew that the warrant officer was being hurt inside the machine! I yelled for someone to help! I tried to tell everyone that there was a man hurt inside the trash compactor, and to please call an ambulance! But, they found it hard to believe and were slow to do anything! Panic filled me as I ran to help him myself and to show them where he was!
The dream changed the two lieutenants into two police officers showing up to investigate the report of a man being hurt in the trash compactor. They were skeptical, especially after I opened the trap door under the overhang and found no sign of the warrant officer. I tried telling them that he must have crawled further down, and that he was definitely in there and most likely dying! We moved to an open garage area at the end of the building. One policeman looked around a little, while the other wanted to take my statement. They were in no hurry. I told them again and again to please call an ambulance, but they refused to do so until they found the hurt man -- if he existed.
Just then, I heard the police officer's hand-held radio say something, and I quickly grabbed it off of his belt and ran outside toward the road. If they wouldn't call for an ambulance, I would! I figured that the fastest way to get one there would be to call in on the police radio and tell them that there was a police officer down and to send an ambulance right away. They would come faster for one of their own, right? So that's what I did. "Police officer down! Send an ambulance immediately!" Just then, I heard them say, "We found something!" I ran back under the overhang and into the open garage! As I got inside the garage, a police officer was opening another trap door in the ceiling. When he opened it, a very large pool of blood and the awful carnage of the completely mangled body of the warrant officer dropped to the floor suddenly! He was definitely dead. I immediately turned away and walked back outside as quickly as I could, but I did not get far. A grief like I had never known or even imagined filled my being, twisted my gut, and dropped me hard on my knees!
I awoke from the dream sobbing, and weighted with such immense sorrow that I was unable to get to my feet. Now, added to my unexplained grief was fearful surprise. "Where is this coming from? It was only a dream!", I said to myself. It was only a dream, but the grief was more real than I had ever known, and completely overwhelmed me. Wave after wave of intensifying grief washed over me, and I was afraid. Suddenly the answer hit me like a bolt of lightning, and I knew it was from God: the dream was sent by God, and it was symbolic. The warrant officer represented my father. (My father was a police officer, killed in the line of duty just before my sixth birthday). The unbearable grief was not new; I had been carrying it around all these years like a big rock in the bottom of my heart. I think I knew it was there, but I had no idea of the magnitude. Part of the dream expressed my sorrow at not being able to help him. Part of it was my frustration with those who wouldn't help him, or were slow in doing so. A large part was about something I had not considered: my sorrow over my father's physical pain, agony, injury, broken bones, and bleeding. Of course, mourning for my dead father was most of it. I had not mourned when my father died -- I just pushed down the pain and went on with my life. The Lord sent the dream to show me the grief and heal me if I would let Him. You see, I never had dreams about my father -- I had buried the grief even at that level, because I was so afraid of it (a difficult point to understand, unless you've been there). God had concealed the dream in symbolism to get past my defenses.
The explanation of the answer that you just read took time to read, but when God sent the answer, it was instantaneous. I was only awake for about thirty seconds, overwhelmed and bewildered, and asking where this was coming from, when I received the answer from God. There was no doubt that it was God. Now I had to make a choice. You may find this hard to understand, but even with the Lord wanting to heal me, it still took every bit of courage I had to say, "Yes, Lord! Heal me! Heal me! Heal me, O Lord, Heal me!" I knew what accepting the Lord's healing would mean. He would not simply take the grief away. He wanted to walk through it with me. I would have to dive to the bottom of my grief like a man diving to the bottom of the ocean, praying as Peter did, "Lord, save me!"
The waves of grief grew even stronger and for lack of a better description, I went under. I wept from the bottom of my soul for a long while. Somewhere in the middle, I began crying out, "Daddy!... Daaddyyy!!... Daaaddyyyyy!!!" Then, a clear memory from my childhood came to mind. I was about four years old, and I was crying in my Daddy's arms. It was night, and he was sitting on the bed in my room. I heard him say, "Cry it all out, son. Cry it all out." My grieving at that point became indescribable. I was no longer to say anything, but I prayed from my heart, "Lord, heal me!" A vivid picture came to my mind of a hand with a scalpel cutting open a physical heart, reaching inside, and pulling out this large, ugly rock, with the sinew clinging to it. The hand cut the sinew, took away the rock, and closed up the heart. I began praying, "Lord, thank You for healing me!! Thank You for healing me!! Thank You, Lord, for healing me!!" My tears began to turn into tears of joy! Just as I knew that God had sent the dream, I knew that God had healed me! I am healed! Praise the Lord!
When my tears began to subside, as I was offering thanksgiving to God, I began to look over my past life as if suddenly a light had been turned on and everything was now clear. My hidden grief for my father had touched every part of my life...nearly every decision ever made... nearly every problem I ever had. Suddenly, I saw it all - saw the effects of the grief on my life, and was very surprised at how big a role it had played in my life.
My relationship with God had been affected by it. When I was sixteen years old, on December 7, 1980, I repented and was wonderfully saved by the Lord Jesus; but, every time that I would slip and fall, I felt that God did not want me anymore. Many times, I wrongly thought that I had to be saved again, and I continually feared that I had lost Him for good -- just like I had lost my earthly father for good, though I failed to see the connection until now. My refusal or inability to progress well in school while growing up was also caused in part by my grief. I didn't want to work or learn or succeed... I just wanted my Daddy.
When I was eight years old, I was molested and raped (sodomized) by a seventeen-year-old nephew of my step-father. For many years, I thought that I remembered it happening only once, but on a recent night, some words rang in my head that caused me to sit bolt upright in my bed: "If you don't let me do it to you anymore, then I'll do it to your little [five-year-old] brother [in the bunk below]!" It wasn't just once. He lived with us for atleast two weeks. It was tragic. Yet, I had often wondered while growing up why I had not suffered what I believed would have been the usual degree of psychological damage from such an abuse. I really had the feeling that somehow I had escaped the full impact, though I did not know why. Now I knew why! While the damage was substantial, I did survive it with less than most because the grief that he caused me did not compare to the grief that I already had within me! (Please do not pity me! The Lord supplies all the healing that I will ever need!)
My original choice of a career in the Army was obviously affected by my father dying in service to his country. It is also no coincidence that I fell in love with, and married, a woman who had lost both of her parents by the age of eighteen. I could go on and on with examples, and I do not even remember all of the ones brought to mind on the night of my healing.
One of the important outcomes of my healing is how I feel about the three people who killed my father. They drove into our front yard around midnight, goading him, and he pursued them. They led him out of town, ran him off the road, pulled him out of his cruiser, beat him until his skull was crushed, put him back into his cruiser, shut off the motor and lights, broke off the key in the ignition, and left him for dead. He was found three hours later, a mere mile from his last known location (on the same road), by a reluctant sherrif's deputy. He died ten days later, leaving behind a wife and three children (6, 2, and 9 months old). The men's names were known, but for lack of evidence, they were never put on trial. When I was first saved, I knew that I would have to forgive these people if God was to forgive me. I tried, and perhaps I did forgive them with God's help and power; but, now that the Lord has healed me, I feel it at a much deeper level. I no longer have to keep reminding myself that I hae forgiven them. With God as my Witness, and only by His grace and power, I love them. That's right... I love the people who killed my father. I pray that the Lord does not hold that sin against them for my sake, and I often pray for their salvation. I hope someday to meet each one of them and share the love and gospel of Christ with them. I can't explain it. Only God can give that kind of love. Only God could heal me in such a manner.
My grief is gone! And I thank God for that; but, I did not have to wait twenty-six years to be healed. The fact that I waited so many years that God had to intervene in the wonderful way that He did is to my shame -- not my credit. His powerful healing of me is to His glory, but He would have healed me at any time, had I only been willing to lay my grief at His feet! He heals the broken hearted. All we have to do is ask! I also am aware that the Christian life should not be about looking back at some fantastic spiritual experience, but should be about pressing forward to reach that high mark that He has put before us.
"Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted." Blessed am I! Praise Him!
Ken</SPAN>